Homemade Economics : The Managerial Rationalization of Women’s Everyday Life in America, 1820-1920

The paper sketches the nature and the logic of the discourse on household administration in America from 1820 to 1920. Using a hermeneutic approach, it reveals how this literature insists on measuring for efficiency rather than on accounting for profit, and thus unveils understandings of management science and economics different from the ones prevailing nowadays. Finally, this study invites to understand this literature not mainly as an instrument for the male oppression of women but as a way for them of escaping tradition.
Key words : household management, economics, accounting, women’s emancipation